CHAPTER TWO (backstory)

And, yes, I have a child, Ruffin, a grown son, twenty-seven now.

A son whom it was difficult to bring into the world as I approached forty.

Because before I myself was born, while I was cradled in the womb of my mother, I was injured, in part by my own mother’s love, by her own desire to keep me to term.

As was then the current euphemism–to start a family.